Lightspeed: Edited by John Joseph Adams

ADVERT: The Time Traveler's Passport, curated by John Joseph Adams, published by Amazon Original Stories. Six short stories. Infinite possibilities. Stories by John Scalzi, R.F. Kuang, Olivie Blake, Kaliane Bradley, P. Djèlí Clark, and Peng Shepherd. Illustration of A multicolored mobius strip with folds and angles to it, with the silhouette of a person walking on one side of it.

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Series Archive: The Kaslo Chronicles

Erm Kaslo is an “op”—a confidential operative based on Novo Bantry, a long-settled planet that is one of the Ten Thousand Worlds, humanity’s far-future civilization.

A highly trained, highly principled security agent, he is at the peak of his professional career when he discovers a forgotten truth: every several thousand years, the fundamental ground rules of the universe arbitrarily switch between rational cause-and-effect and “sympathetic association.” Very soon, the laws of physics will give way to the reign of magic.

Only a handful of people know what’s coming: technological civilization will collapse; Novo Bantry will be ruled by wizards. And the would-be mages are already jockeying for position.

The question facing Kaslo: how will he greet the new order?

 

Fantasy

The Blood of a Dragon

by Matthew Hughes

Author spotlight

The moment Erm Kaslo’s flesh touched the substance of the entity, he understood everything — but only for that moment. Then it turned out that everything was far, far too much for a human brain to take in all at once. He felt as if his skull was straining not to burst its seams, and as if the mind it housed was a thimble into which someone had crammed a barrel’s worth of knowledge. Just sorting all the information into gross categories would be the work of several lifetimes; subdividing it into manageable portions would take millennia.

In May 2015 (Issue 60)

Fantasy

Hapthorn’s Last Case

by Matthew Hughes

Author spotlight

My assistant said, “You have received an invitation from Holk Xanthoulian. He is embarking on a new menu and invites, and I quote, ‘a select coterie of the cognoscenti to sample its superlative assemblage of tastes, textures, and titillations.’” “He has a flair for the alliterative,” I said. “Sadly, that is true,” my assistant said. “Shall I decline?”

In Nov. 2018 (Issue 102)

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